Frequently Asked Questions

Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions about my website. Please read them through before sending me an e-mail question, but if your question is not answered here I will do my best to reply to your mail.

May I link to your website?
By all means. Please feel free to link to this site. I would prefer it if you linked to one of the main pages (the URL always ends in "index.htm"). I would also appreciate it if you could let me know that you have provided a link.

I have to write a paper...
I'm glad that you have found my website useful in your studies. However, I am not able to provide hints and tips to school or undergraduate students on writing essays and papers. I have students of my own, and my obligations to them outweigh those to readers of this website. If you are writing a paper or essay on Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, or Quobna Ottabah Cugoano you should find plenty of information in the bibliographies I have provided on this site. If your essay is a more general one on slavery and abolition, please visit my slavery resource page. If your query is about the eighteenth or nineteenth-century period in general, you will need to visit your school, college, or university library and search for more information in the usual way. If you do choose to use this website in your essay, Please remember to cite it in full giving the URL (web address) and the date you accessed the site.

If you are a postgraduate student engaged in a course of research, then I would be delighted to hear from you. In general, I am unable to help with standard MA or MSc essays, but I may be able to answer your queries in relation to theses and dissertations. If in doubt, contact me anyway, and I'll let you know.

How much is this book/painting/print worth...
If you have found an early or unusual edition of any of the books mentioned on this website, then... Congratulations! Feel free to let me know, as I am always interested, but unfortunately I am unable to provide valuations. I am a literary scholar and not an antiquarian bookseller!

Can you recommend somewhere to stay in Cornwall?
I mostly stay with friends and family in Cornwall so I don't have any recommendations for hotels and guest houses, sorry. You can get lots of information from the Cornwall Tourist Board

Why have you removed your personal e-mail address from this site?
This is not because I was getting thousands of fan mails, but because I was getting too much spam. There are robots that 'harvest' e-mail addresses from websites. If you need to by-pass my contact form, my personal e-mail is brycchan[at]brycchancarey[dot]com - Replace the words within the [square brackets] with the symbol they represent. (This ruse will confuse the robots, I hope.)

What have you done with your links pages?
I removed the general links pages for two reasons. First, they were no longer a highly-used part of my site, especially since the rise of Google and Wikipedia (when I started this site, neither of these existed!) Second, The links would quickly go out of date and so the pages required constant maintainance. I will continue to provide context-specific external links where appropriate, but the general links pages had had their day.

Can you send me news about updates to this website?
Although I don't maintain an e-mail list, you can follow me on Twitter for regular updates about my work and any changes to my website. If you do not use Twitter, you can always bookmark my site and return at regular intervals.

Are you available to speak in public or give radio or television interviews?
Yes I am. I try to be flexible about this, and I am prepared to travel, but I will normally expect at least my travel expenses to be paid. In many cases, I will expect some sort of speaker's fee, but I am often prepared to waive this for universities and community groups. I will also not expect any sort of payment to respond in the media to newsworthy items. For help with researching your TV or radio show I do expect to be noted in the closing credits, but, again, payment is something I'm often prepared to be flexible with, and in many case to waive, depending on the extent of the advice I am able to offer. Please feel to ask!

I would like more information about my ancestor...
Sadly I am not able to provide specific information about your ancestors. Sancho, Equiano, and Cugoano do not appear to have living descendents. Many abolitionists do, but I am not able to comment on your relationship with them. Likewise, I cannot comment on your Cornish forebears. If you are interested in tracing your ancestors, your local library should hold books on genealogy, and these books will also be available at bookshops or from amazon. To trace your UK ancestors, your first port of call, after looking at genealogy books, should be The Public Records Office. In particular, look at their Researching Family History page. You might also look at Parish Chest, a Cornwall-based genealogy site with a lot of useful links and information - not just about Cornwall!

Can you suggest things to do and see in Cornwall?
Of course. Look at my Cornwall page for a start. Then plan to visit the towns of Polperro and St. Ives (for urban beauty), Bodmin Moor and Land's End (for rural beauty), The Men-an-Tol and the Merry Maidens (for megalithic beauty), The Blue Anchor in Helston (for the best pub in the world), Pendennis in Falmouth and St. Michael's Mount at Marazion (for castles). If you still need hints, just ask anyone in any of these places, or go to the website of the Cornwall Tourist Board ...

Do you invite contributions to your site?
Yes. I welcome contributions of articles and entries provided that they are relevent and of a high quality. I am particularly keen to add to the British Abolitionists pages. If you would like to submit an article, please read the Notes for Contributors first. British academics: I can't say how my site will be viewed by the RAE panel, but I hope it will at least be taken seriously. It's up to you!

I wrote to you, but I did not get a reply...
I am getting a lot of email at the moment, and it can take me up to four weeks to reply to individual emails - although I do try to respond more quickly if I can. If you wrote to me recently, please be patient... However, if you have not heard back from me after a few weeks, the most likely reason why you did not get a reply was because you are a student and you were asking for help with a class project. I'm sorry, but I can't help students individually with essays or papers except in exceptional circumstances. Another reason might be that you gave me an incorrect email address - if you think that might be the case, please try again.

How can I contact you personally?
If your question has not been answered by the above, please feel free to send me an email and I will do my best to answer when I can. Please note that I am very busy, and I get a lot of email, so you may not get an instant response. I will, however, try to answer time-sensitive emails within a week, and routine queries within four weeks.